Pitchford: Duke Nukem Forever is “not a nostalgia game at all”

Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford has said Duke Nukem Forever will still maintain some of what the series iconic, yet at the same time a bit if freshness has been added to it as well.

Speaking with Gamespot in London this week, the Gearbox bossman said if the studio had relied on nostalgia alone for the game, it would have just been a port and been over and done with.

However, that’s not the case here with DNF, as the development team is making it as new as possible while still maintaining the core fundamentals.

“It’s a new game, but you can’t succeed with a new game that’s something like Duke without homage or fan service to its roots,” he said. “But it is a new game, so it balances that, I think, pretty smartly with being a modern new game, but not forgetting the things that we remember, that we love, that we’re going to need to experience again–or else we’re going to be upset with it.

“You can’t imagine playing Duke Nukem Forever without using a pipe bomb, like from Duke 3D, or without using some of the classic weapons. I want to get online and play against my buddies, and I want to freeze somebody and break them into little ice cubes, and I want to shrink somebody else and step on them. I’ve got to be able to do those things or I’m going to feel like it’s not an honest successor. Then again, if it’s only a remake of the past, it’s not fresh, it’s not exciting, it’s not new, and I might get bored. So it has to be a new game first.

“If it was nostalgia, you would just port the old game and see what happens. No, it’s not a nostalgia game at all. It’s a new game. It doesn’t have 8-bit graphics. It’s a new game, it just remembers why we love the original and plays tribute to those things as well.”

While slated for 2011 without a solid release date reveal just yet, Pitchford said since those whoe purchase the GOTY edition of Borderlands get an early access demo to DNF, “you can imagine at that stage it won’t be long” before the game comes.

“We’ll announce more of those details as we’re ready”, he added.

Such a tease.

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